The G Suite (formerly Google Apps) Data Migration Service (DMS) tool which was announced in May 2014, started out with some basic data migration of email and has now grown up to be one of the better options for migrating email, calendar and contacts from legacy email environments to G Suite [formerly Google Apps for Work (GaW)]. The Google DMS tool is a cloud based migration tool and in some ways superior to the other Google migration tools such as GAMME, GAMIN, GAMMO, or simply using the Google Simple import of mail, contacts, and calendars. Google lets you bring over all your email, calendar and contacts from whatever current email service you are using and has multiple tools to do just that, including the latest advanced tool, DMS.
Why Migrate Your Data?
Many of our G Suite [formerly Google Apps for Work (GaW)] clients when switching their business email service from their legacy environment want to migrate all their email and Google understands this better than most other email services. Connectech usually asks our clients how much data (email, calendar, contacts, files, etc.) actually needs to be migrated over to GaW? All the email? Or perhaps the last six months? Some clients want all the executive or manager emails migrated while all the other employee email messages may be left behind or only the last thirty days of email messages migrated over to GaW. Some choose to just make the switch and leave all their legacy email behind! Or some clients may simply download PST files to a hard drive. Whatever is needed Connectech will consider your company needs, what the best migration tools to use might be for your company, since each tool has unique capabilities to use depending on the needs of the client. The Google DMS tool has some advantages over the others and we will be concentrating on this tool in this post.
Google DMS Advantages
The Google DMS tool has some distinct advantage over the other tools Google has been using in the past, since it is cloud based. This means that the tool doesn’t require a computer to run the migration since Google does this on the cloud from the legacy mail service to GaW. If your legacy service supports DMS it is worth considering as the first choice. GaW Super Administrators in your company can use the tool which requires a learning curve and can save your company some money if data migration is a requirement. Or perhaps you may want Connectech to do this for you.
DMS Setup
The DMS tool has some caveats that you should consider. First and foremost is the following:
Does your legacy service support DMS? There are requirements.
Google Apps resellers are not able to migrate data on behalf of their customers via the Reseller console. Migrations must be performed using the customer’s Admin console. This requires that Connectech have all the usernames and passwords of the legacy accounts and the GaW accounts. Your super administrator user account can do this if that is preferred or you can let Connectech do this for you.
Another important caveats are enabling less secure apps for your domain and each user account, enabling POP and IMAP for each user account, and confirming you can login to the legacy mail server role account.
There is a definite learning curve using the DMS tool, so if you feel comfortable tackling this for your company go ahead. Or you can contact us and let us handle it for you.